Category Archives: Astrophysics

I’m reading Light of the Stars “Alien Worlds and the Fate of the Earth” — Adam Frank.

I’m about halfway through and so far Frank has supplied mostly background in his attempt, I’m assuming, to present various models — based on our solar system’s mechanics and planetary variations — to determine the probability of exo-civilizations, in the galaxy and the cosmos in general.

Humanity’s existence and technological capability is dependent on a host of serendipitous “coin-flips” all landing up heads. Two of the biggest and most impactful are plate tectonics and the availability of a billion years worth of stored solar energy in the form of fossil fuel.

Plate tectonics ensures that CO2 is recycled. (CO2 is fixed from the atmosphere as sediment and rock, calcium carbonate — limestone, taken below the crust, disassociated and then re-released by volcanoes around the planet.) Without this cycle, CO2 would stay fixed, the planet would cool (as it has done in the past) (Nitrogen and Oxygen, 78% and 21%, are not efficient greenhouse gases) and that would be it for Earth.

And we all know what fossil fuels have done for humanity; taken an energy starved species and give it unlimited access to millions of years of nearly-free solar power. Without fossil fuels, humanity would have killed off all the whales (for fuel), burned down all the forests (for fuel), and never seen the explosive population growth that produced copious ideas resulting in constant technological advancement.

Part of his premise (I’m guessing) is to determine the impact and potential mitigation of global warming during the Anthropocene. This unusual release of extra CO2 that is warming the planet is, as far as he’s concerned, a potential solution to the Fermi Paradox: exo-civilizations might kill themselves off by their shear size and impact on their planet.

As I read Adam Frank’s setup I thought about a strange “ready for fiction” story line:

What would happen if a volcano suddenly spawned beneath one (or more) vast crude oil fields? Imagine if a Kilauea sized volcano burst up from the sands of Saudi Arabia. The heat and fire would start the oil burning. Thirty mile-high plumes of smoke would spread out for decades. Nuclear winter would descend. This is much like what a super-volcano would do, but a smaller volcano would suffice to trigger the calamity.

This is typical, don’t you think, this reading of anything and the extrapolation of a fiction story from the material? The “what if”s. I thrive on them.

Here’s an alternative “Zoo” hypothesis regarding a solution to the Fermi Paradox. We’ll call it the Lab Hypothesis.

If you’ll recall, the Zoo Hypothesis is the idea that intelligent, space-faring cognizants exist and they, either a single species or a collective, have intentionally isolated Earth (we’re effectively quarantined) in order to allow humanity to sink-or-swim, as it were.

The Lab Hypothesis is similar, however, the determining factor is that outside intervention is not forbidden, only restricted. And that Earth is “mined” for the myriad lifeforms and organic compounds and molecules that are produced by those lifeforms.

Think, autonomous chemistry laboratory, which haphazardly creates and/or evolves millions of chemicals which are rare in the galaxy. These fabrications are collected by aliens (which might explain the errant sightings of spacecraft), and then sold/traded/used by other populations of intelligent races in the galaxy.

Consider that life is rare (so far — very rare). And that life itself is more capable when it comes to producing strange new chemicals. Even the most advanced AI-computers in the galaxy cannot calculate the working, stable combinations of elements that make up, say, vanilla, cinnamon, coffee, banana, okra, or cannabinoids, millions of chemical and drug compounds the corp-pharma industry searches for in the jungles of the world.

Life, nature, is just too good at making stuff up that works, on some level, to affect living beings, psychotropically, physically, or materially (spider silk for example).

So, Earth is a lab, and we’re lab-rats, and the thousands of spices, fragrances, liquids, intoxicants, etc. that we enjoy — our alien neighbors do too.

But they want to keep it a secret — and not risk polluting the petri-dish.

If intelligent extra terrestrial beings exist, and they have access to Earth, then they’re assholes. Hear me out…

If IETs (intelligent extra terrestrials) exist then they have the where-with-all to:
first) get here — across light years of space,
second) understand that we too are an intelligent race, and
third) intervene if they so choose, given their vast advances in technology.

Let’s assume they exist.

Let’s assume they know about us.

Let’s assume they have visited us (and are currently visiting us).

And let’s assume they’re not refugees, or small bands of wanderers, or scout/archeologists.

That is, they are a presence in the galaxy (or universe). They’re a real space faring race with the power and technology to affect their world — and ours. They’ve got it goin’ on.

If the IETs are aggressors, or bandits, or conquers or bad dudes — then of course they’re assholes. So we can exclude those automatically.

But, if they’re not, if they’re peaceful, and inquisitive explorers (like I would expect Earthlings to be were we to someday explore the galaxy) then why the hell haven’t they come down and helped us? They must see us struggling down here; at each other’s throats; destroying our own world; over-populating it, polluting it, eating it up, killing off untold species. Yet they sit up there and WATCH?

“Oh, the Prime Directive says hands off.” What bullshit! What kind of race watches another race kill themselves when they could intervene and ameliorate the situation? Oh yeah — assholes.

Even if they don’t have the full capacity to help everyone, they must know that humanity is fraught with racial, gender and economic stresses that are tearing at the very fiber of our civilization; and that simply “knowing” they (IETs) exist would unite humanity under the umbrella of Homo Sapien Sapiens. Yet they do nothing? Why? Oh yeah – because they’re assholes.

And if they really don’t want to publicly denounce their Prime Directive, they could very easily “influence” a few engineers here and there to guide them on how to produce fusion, or anti-gravity, or some other advanced energy generation technology. Sneak down and whisper in their ears… Hell, whisper in Elon Musk’s ear. But have they? Will they? No they haven’t and won’t. Why? Because they’re assholes.

So, either intelligent extra terrestrial species don’t exist — or they’re all assholes.

Why? Well, yeah, why? Humanity will very soon be able to exist fully in virtual reality. Once we have perfect simulation of reality, then our imaginations of what might be in the Universe will greatly exceed what is actually there. Our stories will be much more alluring and billions of times cheaper to explore and investigate. As soon as we can “think” we’re exploring the solar system, the galaxy, and the universe, while being immersed inside VR tanks, or suits or neural implants, then why would humanity spend the time and money _actually_ exploring those spaces?

The scientific community would, one suppose, continue to pursue exploration and discovery, building bots that traveled as fast as they might to other star systems. But the billions of commoners who were more than happy to just sit back and imagine they were on another planet, eating exotic foods, speaking and interacting with bizarre aliens — why would they ever want to risk actually traveling to such locations?

They wouldn’t. And the funding for such actual excursions will dwindle as VR sims become more and more real. The economic reason for exploration of other star systems will fail to compare to the economic reason for delivering an even better virtual world here. And face it, the human imagination is nearly inexhaustible. It’s unlikely that the universe can beat us in the extraordinary portrayal of diversity of life and systems. (Unlikely, not impossible.)

If humanity lives through the next fifty years (no CMEs that destroy civilization, no plagues, no nukes, no asteroids or super volcanoes) then by the time we could actually GO to Mars, we won’t have to, or want to — at least not to experience it. We’ll be able to do that right in our Almost-There-Capsules.

This is one of the solutions to the Fermi Paradox. And, really, humans are almost there.

One of the theoretical solutions to Fermi’s Paradox is the Rare Earth theory.

Fermi’s Paradox, if you’re unfamiliar, is the quandary that asks if intelligent life is probable in the galaxy and/or universe — why have we not seen evidence of it? (Aside from our own?)

There are so called “solutions” to this question and you can research them if you care to, but the one that I find most compelling is the one that supposes “Earth is rare.” Isaac Arthur’s Youtube channel has a Fermi’s Paradox compendium video which explains, in detail, this and the other solutions (Video).

There is one aspect of this Rare Earth solution that seems to go unexamined. And it is this: That Coronal Mass Ejections, CMEs, will have a severe and recurring negative affect on any technologically advanced society.

Humanity has experienced just one CME of a size to do it serious damage. You may or may not be familiar with the 1859 Carrington Event and the government reports on the next CME that will hit us (as well as the July 2012 CME that barely missed us), but you should.

CMEs have the potential, some think slight, but I think enormous, to disrupt electricity generation and transmission. I believe few people, if anybody, have theorized the extent to which a CME (every few hundred years — or more frequently) will have on an advanced technological society…

Or what it will have on OUR advanced technological society. Our electricity dependent civilization has never experienced a CME of Carrington level.

The solution to Fermi’s Paradox would hold that CMEs slamming electricity enabled civilizations anywhere in the galaxy or universe, over and over, each time knocking them back hundreds of years of their progress, wasting resources (like irreplaceable fossil fuels) will, in the end, suppress such civilizations from becoming electro-magnetically communicating / space-faring species.

Periodic coronal mass ejections would continually reset alien intelligence species’ societal progress. After every CME that wipes out their electricity generation and transmission capability their society will collapse. Over and over. CME’s happen again and again, in cycles.

The next massive Carrington level CME to strike Earth is going to, potentially, collapse our technological society. If a pair of massive CMEs were to hit during our summer, 10 to 16 hours apart — say goodbye to civilization in the Northern Hemisphere.

Most experts who analyze the impact of CMEs, I think, underestimate the destructive force they pose. I believe that, specifically, the millions of miles of wire strung in every city and state, in every business building and home, in every subway, train station, in every airliner, in every container ship, in every facet of society — WILL be affected. WILL react to the magnetic plasma attack that a CME represents. And that this reality, here-to-for unexamined and unrealized, will collapse human society.

When it happens to us then it could happen to any galactic intelligent species. This, in my opinion, represents a valid solution to the Fermi Paradox.

The problem with Star Wars and Star Trek and many other “Star blah blah blah” type story lines is this: where are the robots?

No, I’m not talking about the cute comic-relief characters, nor am I talking about the droid-wars robots.

Here’s the thing, Space Is Hard. Even Elon admits this. Biologically based creatures die — really easily — in space. They die if they don’t eat, don’t get liquids, don’t get enough to breathe, get squeezed or stretched or ripped. Biological creatures are fragile. A biological military force, or agents, or workers or what-have-you would be a society’s LAST resort. The first thing a sentient species would do when they start exploring space is to build up the biggest, baddest, smartest, most versatile space-force using ROBOTS they could.

People? We’re not gonna use PEOPLE — hell no!

Look, Humans suck at space. Right now about 1 out of 20 rockets we launch BLOW UP! And that’s good. That’s the best we’ve gotten so far. Imagine if 1 out of every 20 commercial flights that took off from airports just today BLEW UP! About 100k flights occur everyday. Imagine if 5000 of them exploded in the last 24 hour. Hell No!

So, between our really really bad track record for sending rockets into space and our super-duper track record for flying airplanes, we have a long way to go.

Now, let’s examine our robotic and computer track record. We’ve got some amazing technology there. Robots are going to be replacing humans for most manual labor, and most complex logistics and management in the next 20 years.

Let’s think about this. Humanity will have an amazing robotic work force and superior artificial intelligences in just another generation.

But we won’t have a reliable means of space travel for at least two or three generations.

By the time we can blast around the solar system (or galaxy) in a Millennium Falcon humans will have constructed an incredible robotic space-force. And with that space-force we would be sending ROBOTS out with vast AIs in our space craft to do our exploring, and our patrolling and our space war fighting. We wouldn’t send frail, easy to puncture organic HUMANS! Hell No!

Extraterrestrial Sentient Species in our galaxy would be even smarter than us. They would have even better robots and artilects. They would never use their biological selves to do the work robots would do so much more effectively.

That’s the problem with Star Wars and Star Trek. Their story lines rely on bags of animated organic chemicals and not robots; which is just — implausible.

But let’s not make the mistake of pretending that a Martian colony represents some human lifeboat failsafe; that it could be a ‘offline humanity backup’ ready to return society to Earth in case of a total apocalyptic event. Let’s face it, the worst day on Earth will beat the best day on Mars — when it comes to survival — every time.

The likelihood that an ELE (extinction level event) will kill EVERY human on the planet, is pretty darn small. While the likelihood that an ‘uh-oh!’ moment on Mars will kill every Martian is much much higher.

Eukaryotic life has existed continuously on this planet for 2.5by. On Mars — never. Even through massive extinction level events, earth was livable within a few years to decades later. You screw up on Mars – game over! You crawl out of your cave on Earth after 20 years – hey fresh start. And look, O2 to breath for free and H2O to drink. And I don’t have to wear a spacesuit to go take a pee outside. (Not that you’d ever do that on Mars…)

Things that might go wrong on earth that would require a human society reboot:

Snowball earth would take centuries to develop, not much of a ELE there.

Super volcano? Mega asteroid? Both would come with warnings, plenty of time to distribution billions of dollars of resources in underground locales around the globe (or on the moon).

Sun death? What? In like 5b years? Like humanity is gonna even survive the next U.S. election cycle…

If Musk was sincere about saving humanity, and he was serious about doing it soon, then he should probably build an ark on the Moon and keep it stocked with a Svalbard Seed Vault and a couple of IBM Watsons full of all the information to rebuild society. Oh and maybe a few ten thousand embryos of a few hundred different species of animals, not to mention embryos of humans. Maybe get a couple of dozen caretakers up there too. Then, a generation or so after the planet gets wiped – send down a part of the Ark to kickstart society. If you ‘really’ wanted to protect the continuity of the human species — that’s the way to do it.

Probability speaking, the odds that a Martian colony will survive long enough, off or on its own, be able to package up every possible resource a new Earth based human colony will need, send it back successfully, to land successfully, in a location that is now “fit for humanity” is so astronomically small that to speak of it as one of the primary reasons to build a Martian colony is ludicrous.

Elon Musk’s scenario puts the “successful isolated backup drive” on Mars, out, realistically, to at least five generations. We could build the Lunar Ark in one.

Point is, you wanna create a backup drive? Either make one here where you’ve already got all the resources to do so. Or, if you’re drop-dead convinced that Earth will get clean-slated, then build a lunar back up system. The Lunar Ark system could work!